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Perhaps my expectations were too high, but a film combining the talents of Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Mike Nichols should not be this flabby and shapeless. Heartburn begins with a good foundation, but quickly crumbles once we realize it’s main character is going to project all of the blame for the failed relationship on her partner, and scene after scene will not add up to a satisfying conclusion.
Perhaps the fault of this lies squarely at the foot of Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay based upon her thinly disguised autobiographical novel. There’s never any believable or reasonable explanation for these two characters to attract each other, marry, or continually orbit each other’s lives. The script also begins to unravel as an episodic structure develops and we quickly realize that these scenes are not going to build upon each other into a coherent narrative. This rambling, shaggy structure works fine for a novel in which slices of life moments can reveal character depths or inner monologues, but that freewheeling structure is hard to translate to film. A tighter control is needed to wrangle all of the moving parts into a whole that feels complete. Heartburn doesn’t have that guiding hand.
While Streep and Nichols typically work magic together, and present her with a flawed, interesting character, too many of the other actors are wasted. Nicholson is stuck with a thinly drawn figure, one that we’re supposed to hiss at more than we understand. Consistently strong supporting players like Maureen Stapleton and Catherine O’Hara are given roles that look like plum parts before eventually just disappearing. They do solid work with what little they’re given to do, but this is mostly a film for Streep to suffer, cry, fall into anxious fits, regain strength, then shove a pie in her husband’s face. It’s not a very exciting film, and I only watched it as a major fan of Nichols, Nicholson, and Streep. Unless you're also a major fan of those three, I don’t really know if I can recommend giving this one a spin.
